Beyond Borders Kathleen Braden Seattle Pacific Nu Iversity
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Seattle aP cific nivU ersity Digital Commons @ SPU SPU Works January 1st, 1998 Beyond Borders Kathleen Braden Seattle Pacific nU iversity Wilbur Zelinsky Sergei Rogachev Thomas Baerwald Aleksei Naumov Moscow State University See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.spu.edu/works Part of the Human Geography Commons, Nature and Society Relations Commons, Physical and Environmental Geography Commons, and the Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies Commons Recommended Citation Braden, Kathleen; Zelinsky, Wilbur; Rogachev, Sergei; Baerwald, Thomas; Naumov, Aleksei; Florin, John; Krishchyunas, Raymond; Novikov, Aleksei; and Brunn, Stanley, "Beyond Borders" (1998). SPU Works. 2. https://digitalcommons.spu.edu/works/2 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ SPU. It has been accepted for inclusion in SPU Works by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ SPU. Authors Kathleen Braden, Wilbur Zelinsky, Sergei Rogachev, Thomas Baerwald, Aleksei Naumov, John Florin, Raymond Krishchyunas, Aleksei Novikov, and Stanley Brunn This book is available at Digital Commons @ SPU: https://digitalcommons.spu.edu/works/2 Table of Contents Chapter American Themes Russian Themes Authors Introduction Kathleen Braden The Core The Urban Archipelago The Urban Island Wilbur Zelinsky Power of the Core Power from the Core Sergei Rogachev The North A Difficult Environment A Difficult Environment Thomas Baerwald A Stubborn Culture A Stubborn Culture Aleksei Naumov Boston St Petersburg The South Economies Based on Heritage of Injustice Economy Based on Social Injustice John Florin Race Relations: Preservation of Inequality Conservatism and Change Aleksei Naumov Cultural Conservatism The Heartland Main Street U.S.A. Russia’s Main Street Thomas Baerwald The Ethnic Salad Bowl The Ethnic Salad Bowl Raymond Krishchyunas Aleksei Novikov The Crossroads The Crossroads of Cultures The Crossroads of Cultures Stanley Brunn Criss-Crossing the Volatile Region Criss-Crossing the Volatile Region Raymond Krishchyunas The Breadbasket Agricultural Landscapes & Idealized Cultures Idealized Rural Landscapes Thomas Baerwald Government and Geometry on the Landscape Government and Geometry on the Landscape Aleksei Novikov Raymond Krishchyunas The Old Mountains An Economy As Worn Down As the Mountains An Economy As Worn Down As the Mountains Stanley Brunn A Culture Walled Up In the Mountains A Culture Walled Up In the Mountains Sergei Rogachev Tropical South Sun and Sin Economy Sun and Sin Economy Wilbur Zelinsky American Shore of the Turbulent Caribbean Storms Along the Black Sea Raymond Krishchyunas Chapter American Themes Russian Themes Authors Mexistan The Dual Society The Dual Society Wilbur Zelinsky Wealth & Water Wealth & Water Raymond Krishchyunas The Land Ocean The Frontier as Myth & Symbol The Frontier as Myth & Symbol Raymond Krishchyunas The Boom & Busts The BAM & Busts Aleksei Novikov John Florin Kathleen Braden Pacific Edge Chasing a Rim of Growth Chasing a Rim of Growth Kathleen Braden Living on a Ring of Fire Living on a Ring of Fire Aleksei Novikov Raymond Krishchyunas Conclusions The Places We Left Out Kathleen Braden The Last Place INTRODUCTION Is it possible to look out over the Ural Mountains and see Appalachia? To find the character of the American West in the vast open space of Siberia? To smell the citrus and feel the warm sun of the Black Sea coast and be struck with a sense of Florida? This book is based on just such an idea: that we can look beyond our borders and discover fundamental realities about places that transcend differences of culture, language, and politics. Five American and four Russian geographers wrote this book to provide glimpses of understanding about the United States and Russia. Despite the size and power of our two nations and more than seventy years of cold war, we seem to have a meager comprehension of each other, perhaps because each country is so often viewed as a monolith and we emphasize our differences, rather than similarities. The authors of this book worked together in the hopes of overcoming some misimpressions of the past. Beyond Borders became an experiment - an attempt to compare the United States and Russia by pairing up and analyzing eleven regions. We have therefore taken the rather risky step of suggesting similarities between New England and Novgorod, between Odessa and New Orleans, between Moscow and New York. But perhaps the time has never been more appropriate for such a new approach to geography because so many people seem adrift on the changing world 1 map. In an era when established states are breaking up, new alliances are forming, and the very idea of state sovereignty is being transformed, we may begin to question whether all these lines on the map actually mean anything to people. Is there an underlying “real” geography which can provide an anchor? We believe that our regional scheme is somewhat like the well-trodden paths on our campuses. People have an innate sense of the best routes, even when architects lay out concrete sidewalks to the contrary. In writing our book, we have tried to reveal the long trampled footpaths of real borders and regions, not the paved political boundaries that often have little meaning for the lives and fates of human beings. Letter written to a friend April 26, 1935: While we do not try to minimize the differences between Russia and America, we observed that people in the two countries have many similarities in the way they You say, "Russia is not just a state...she is a super- state, an ocean, elements as yet unformed, not yet spread across the continents, adapted to various environments, conquered or absorbed pulled to its destined shore. [She has] not yet indigenous people, and molded their respective geographies into a set of regions. But begun to sparkle in a sharp and limited understand- ing of her own uniqueness, as the gemstone begins how should that set be defined since the delineation of regions is in part dependent on to glitter within the rough diamond. She is still the criteria selected? in anticipation, restlessness, endless desire, and endless organic possibilities. Russia is an ocean of land which has swept up a whole one-sixth of the We decided to take a particular historic and cultural viewpoint in selecting the eleven earth, holding both East and West together by region-pairs of Beyond Borders. We began with the realization that the majority groups the touch of her open wings. ~ N.K. Rerikh, The Elected, Moscow, Sovetskaya Rossiya publ., in both Russian and American society were offspring of European parents whose seed 1979, p. 303; transl. by K. Braden was transplanted into a North and South hearth in each country. But between these two seedbed regions, something new was born: a Core area which was to become all that one could define as uniquely American or Russian. American democracy was as alien to Europe as Russian autocracy, yet for all their differences, these two Core regions were similar in the creation of two novel cultures on the map. As the new Russian and American societies burst out into the interiors of their respective continents, a series of regions was formed, remarkably similar in their 2 function and characteristics: the Heartlands of industrial muscle, the food-supplying Breadbaskets, the orphaned no-man’s-land Crossroads, the eerie Old Mountains, the Tropical South playgrounds, the arid “Mexistans”, and the vast expanses of Land Ocean that were the American West and Siberia. The waves of conquest and settlement moved east and west respectively and finally met up at the Pacific Edge along a touchstone called Alaska. Could such an exercise be carried out for any two states on earth? Probably not, because The idea of American "exceptionalism" is we believe that the United States and Russia are are unique in their historic and spatial valid if you take it in the sense that America has its own civilization pattern...it does stress parallels. Even the geographic changes in what was the USSR have confirmed some the ways in which America has been favored of the principles the authors foresaw at the beginning of this project. Many of the by geography and historical circumstance. One view of the geographical theory under- republics which made up the USSR never really belonged in Russia as a wider cultural scores the expanse of continent, another realm, but were more like colonies. At the same time, beneath the arbitrarily drawn the expanse of oceans. The continental version points out that America has been boundaries of the republics, there was an underlying but hidden “real” geography blessed with a richness of resources...as few which may yet emerge politically into something more than Russia, perhaps a other nations. The oceanic version points to the stretch of the Atlantic and the Pacific recognition of the term “Rossiya”, loosely translated as “All Russia”. Rossiya includes which enabled America to develop...far from areas (such as North Kazakhstan) which have large Russia populations and where the the wars and dynastic struggles of other nations.~ Max Lerner, America As A Civi- cultures and histories of local people were well intertwined with that of Russia. Our lization, New York, Simon and Schuster, scheme in this book, therefore, goes beyond the current political borders to focus on a 1957, pp. 28-29 larger geography - on Rossiya. At the same time, NAFTA, or the North American Free Trade Agreement, as well as separatist movements in Canada, hint that the North American map itself may not be beyond a redefining of political boundaries in the future. The experiment of Beyond Borders suggests that the printed lines on paper maps shift and reform constantly to reflect realities of human society. In designing our scheme, the authors found that some geographic entities have no regional analogs.